Well, people with skin conditions like acne -- yep, hello -- are more susceptible to the glands clogging, which means not only do I have to deal with breakouts all over my skin but also lumps in my eyes that make my eyelids droop and blur my vision and look horrible and gross.
But, you know, I'm getting into self pity there. We all have our burdens. Moaning about my problems and wishing they weren't so is what the old me was about. The new me is about doing what is in my power to do, and letting go of the rest.
So I'm applying warm compresses to one of my eyelids, in which there is I think a clogged gland in its early stages. I'm massaging the lid gently downwards, as per doctor's instructions, in the hopes of unblocking the debris and encouraging the oil to drain away. There's no lump yet, and hopefully there won't be this time. And if there is, well I'll deal with that when it happens. Maybe it'll be a good opportunity to practice putting less of my sense of self in my physical appearance, to remember that people are beautiful for the grace with which they deal with life, not for having smooth skin and symmetrical features.
- - -
Came across a Twitter thread by the Scottish comedian Limmy today, about his mental health. In particular a bit about people reminding him of the good things in his life when he's gone under:
"When I get in that suicidal way, it feels like a rage, like a fog, but I'm not angry. I just cannae think straight. Saying "But what about your son?" means fuck all when I get like that. It's like I'm unable to feel good, or remember feeling good.This really strikes a chord with me. Depression is like being in a different brain, it's like moving into a different room from your loved ones. They're still there, in that old room, along with your interests, your hopes, your passions, but you're across the hall in a black room, and you cannot touch them.
People sometimes talk about depression being a dark cloud passing in front of the sun, a thunderous rainstorm, that you should remember that blue skies are still blazing behind the shadow, but this image does not adequately describe the sensation for me. It might be comforting when healthy to imagine mental illness as being a temporary anomaly, but the truth is that when you are inside an episode it is its own reality, its own realm, cold and inert, and it is the warm living realm that feels like the lie.
This thing about loved ones is a good illustration. It isn't that you don't love your family, your spouse, your friends -- as in that you experience love but not specifically for these people -- it is that the whole concept of love is foreign to you. You know logically that you love them, you remember your life in the warm realm and remember that yes, of course you love your family. But in the cold realm there is no love.
If love is the attraction of all particles, depression is the repulsion of those particles. If love is sensing the space between people as somehow alive and tangible, holding us and drawing us together, then depression is sensing only the emptiness between things. It's like the connection between humans and their daemons in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials books -- and depression is the severing of that connection, literally like the invisible threads that connect your soul to other souls have been cut with a knife.
When in the warm realm of good mental health you don't have to work out that you love someone, that you enjoy an activity, that food tastes good, you just innately know it, innately feel it -- but in the cold realm of depression all you innately know is that you feel nothing at all.
It is a sensation of horror, except a frozen horror, one that you don't have the depth of feeling to experience. It would be fitting to cry, but tears spring from a well of emotion of which you in this realm are not in possession. What escapes instead is a sort of strangled fatigued yelp.
Reality is only ever a construct, only ever imagined in our heads, and mental illness simply constructs a different reality. From inside it all the rules that made sense in that warmer realm no longer apply. You cling to the frail memory of the other place, though that memory is shorn of feeling, of vibrancy, you cling to its edges anyway, in the hopes of finding your way back across the void.
And you can find your way back. Depression does pass. Methods do work. It's just nothing feels like it works at the time. Part of the journey home, I think, involves recognising that you cannot trust the reality of the depressed realm. What you have to trust is the memories of the living realm, even though you can't presently see or smell or touch what the memories represent. You have to find some way to go outside even though going outside is the hardest worst thing in the world to do. You have to eat a healthy meal even though the idea of vegetables and cooking turns your stomach. You have to start haltingly and awkwardly talking to someone, saying that you are lost at sea, although the words are like chalk in your mouth.
There is another world. If you're struggling now then hear me when I say there is another world. Have faith, and hold to that faith, even when you have absolutely nothing else. Just keep going.
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